» Has F1 technology overtaken Rubens?

An interesting suggestions emerging from the woodwork is that Rubens Barrichello could be struggling with the sport’s ever-sophisticated steering wheels.

The sport’s longest-serving driver kicked off his eighteenth consecutive season with a – what we’ll kindly describe as – a clumsy race weekend, that featured several trips into the gravel traps in practice and qualifying, and a drive-through penalty for a clearly at-fault collision with Nico Rosberg during the race.

Rubens – a man known for being armed with a lengthy list of excuses – later blamed Nico Rosberg for causing the accident at Turn 3 by braking too early, when most insiders felt that Rubens would never have made the corner had he not used the German’s Mercedes GP as a ‘brake’!

And with several drivers complaining that the addition of more steering wheel buttons to deploy KERS and DRS is making their driving workload too high, a close source has suggested that this could be the cause of the Brazilian’s poor race at Albert Park.

“Barrichello even had trouble with the multi-function steering wheel he had at Ferrari, and compared to a modern wheel that’s like the Kreisliga (Germany’s ninth-tier football league) versus the Champions League,” the source is quoted as saying in Speed Week.

[Image via Formula1]